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Re: Edward and Walter Bennett

December 10, 1999
BOSTON - Reputed New England mob boss Francis ``Cadillac Frank'' Salemme took the witness stand in federal court on Thursday and surrendered his four-year-long fight against the government. Salemme pleaded guilty to more than a dozen counts of racketeering, loansharking and extortion - a list so lengthy it took Judge Mark Wolf nearly 45 minutes to finish. Although the indictment had charged Salemme with the 1967 killings of mob associate Richard Grasso, rival bookmaker Edward ``Wimpy'' Bennett and his brothers William and Walter, the murder charges will be dismissed or suppressed, Wolf said.

Re: Edward and Walter Bennett

Article Text:
For 35 years, or more than three-quarters of his life, Walter Bennett waited for the moment . . . never quite believing it would actually arrive.

Yesterday morning, Walter sat in the rear of a packed federal courtroom and heard Francis P. "Cadillac Frank" Salemme, former boss of the New England mob, finally admit to his role in the murders of his father and his two uncles.
"I needed to hear it," Walter said, during the morning break. "It was tough, but I needed to hear him say what we knew in our hearts for all these years: He (Salemme) and Stevie (Flemmi) killed my Dad and my uncles."
In the space of about 10 minutes yesterday, Salemme methodically recounted the successive murders of Edward "Wimpy," Walter and William Bennett within a 9-month span during 1967.
The Bennett brothers once owned a loan sharking and gambling operation in Roxbury and Dorchester. They were also mentors to the two men who eventually executed them.
Flemmi fired a bullet into the side of WimpyBennett's face. When his brother, Walter, sought revenge, Frank Salemme calmy but firmly told the court, "Yes, I planned the demise of Mr. Walter Bennett."
Finally, when William Bennett realized his brothers had fallen at the hands of two "old friends," Salemme, who was once nicknamed "The General," by Wimpy, worked up another plan.
Billy Bennett was to be shot in one car, his body stuffed in another, then buried in the same unmarked grave behind a Hopkinton gun club with Wimpy and Walter, Salemme said.
But "The General's" plan failed when William Bennett, who was shot at close range, fell out of the moving car and died in the street.
"At least my family has a place to go," Walter said, the emotion still welling in his eyes as he left the court. "I can go to the grave and tell my father what happened here today. My cousins don't even have that much, because my uncles' (bodies) still haven't been found."
Billy Bennett's son, Walter, said he will hate Frank Salemme until the day he dies. But the range of feeling churning inside is not nearly so simple. Walter also expressed a certain gratitude for "the small bit of healing" the 68-year-old mobster gave him.
"I can see that there's a truth in what he's saying up there," Walter said, "a truth about what he's got to do. After all, Stevie betrayed him like he betrayed my father. He left his own friend hanging out there to dry.
"Salemme makes a powerful witness, I think, because what he's trying to say is the truth. But that doesn't change how I feel about him."
This was but one small sub-plot in a haunting criminal biography. The life Salemme laid bare yesterday stretched from the ancient McLaughlin-McLean gang war of the '60s, to the intricate legal dance of the late '90s, one that would drape the FBI in shame.
In driving a nail the size of a railroad spike into John Connolly's defense, Salemme chronicled his star-crossed career as a mafioso with as much detail and precision as David McCullough picked apart John Adams.
It was a master class in the rituals of the capos and their particular "degimes." Frank guided us deep into the befuddled guts of the Patriarca crime family, which he reluctantly inherited.
"I didn't want the job (as boss)," he said. The Mafia "commission" in New York told him to take over.
Weaving in and out of his life was a "friendly" serpent known as Steve Flemmi. It was Flemmi who conspired with Salemme to blow up the car of Joe Barboza's lawyer 30 years ago. And it was Flemmi who would set his old friend up to go to prison - arranging to have him arrested in New York by . . . Special Agent John Connolly.
After Frank's 17 years in the can, it was Flemmi who assured him they could have a great criminal future together because they had FBI agent John Connolly to watch over them.
Salemme said he watched his treacherous friend send at least two envelopes filled with $5,000 off to "Zip" Connolly.
After Connolly slithered out of the FBI and into a VP's seat with Boston Edison, he invited Salemme up to his office in the Pru. Johnny told Frank he was writing a book about his "storied" career as a Mafia buster. He was going to immortalize Frank with a whole chapter. Frank was unimpressed. Then he told the Mafia boss not to worry about the grand jury on the horizon. Zip said he'd get word through Flemmi when the indictments were about to land.
Salemme put it all out there yesterday, and Tracy Miner, Zip's lawyer, never managed to touch him. As for John Connolly's manuscript, "Only The Ghost Knows," the story that was supposed to make him at least as famous as Donnie Brasco, it's now just a bulky government exhibit.
Actually, it was an aging Cadillac Frank, now showing a slight tremor, who managed to immortalize a fallen G-man by moving him closer to a cell in Danbury.
Caption: TAKEN OUT: Edward Bennett and his brothers, Walter and William, were killed in Mob hits in Hopkinton last year. Herald file photo
Caption: SEARCHING: Massachusetts State Police investigators dig for the remains of Edward and Walter Bennett behind a gun club in Hopkinton last year. Herald file photo by George Martell

Re: Edward and Walter Bennett

Article Text:
The daughter of one of two alleged mob murder victims paid her final respects at her dad's suspected grave at a Hopkinton target range as state police abandoned their eight-day dig for the Bennett brothers' remains.

"I came here today to let go of 33 years of tremendous pain," said Barbara Bennett, daughter of Walter Bennett, who officials believe was killed by Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi during a 1967 underworld turf war. "I just buried it, ... This is where it needs to stay."
Officials from the state police and Drug Enforcement Administration, along with a crew from the MDC, have been digging since Nov. 13 at the Hopkinton Sportsmen's Association, searching for the bodies of Dorchester bookies Walter Bennett, 55, and his younger brother, Edward "Wimpy" Bennett, 47.
Another brother, William Bennett, was also killed in 1967 during the mob battle.
Sources have said investigators were led to the site by convicted Mafia boss Francis "Cadillac Frank" Salemme, who told them Flemmi killed the pair and Salemme helped him bury the bodies at the range.
State police Maj. Thomas Foley said searchers had dug up an area roughly the size of a football field to no avail. Foley said the area had changed with dirt brought in to build a berm, which was partially torn down during the dig.
Foley said investigators had gone down "six to eight feet" below the original surface but came up empty. He downplayed the possibility the bodies had been moved to another location.
"I still believe, based on the information provided, we're in the right spot. We're very confident that we didn't miss an area."
Foley said finding the bodies is important for the families and added it's possible investigators will return if new information surfaces.
"This is important and it's a priority," said Foley. "It's not easy for us to walk away. ... This is the first time we have been unsuccessful."
During the last two years, police have dug up the bodies of six suspected victims of the Winter Hill Gang at shallow graves in Quincy and Boston.
Barbara Bennett arrived with an unidentified man about 3 p.m., just after the backhoes began backfilling the holes. Police allowed her to walk over to one of the areas, where she knelt hidden by a backhoe for about two minutes as she was comforted by her companion. She then shook hands with the officials. Bennett praised investigators' efforts but said it appeared the search for her father and uncle had come to an end, in turn giving her "closure."
"They just don't want to be found," she said. "I can't speak for anybody else (other family members) but I can't stay stuck on this forever."

Caption:
GRIEF: Barbara Bennett, accompanied by a family friend, leaves the site of the alleged mob graveyard in Hopkinton. STAFF PHOTO BY KEVIN WISNIEWSKI

Re: Edward and Walter Bennett

I really wish that someone would email me and tell me these brothers have been eliminated as being this unidentified male or just anything. I do have other possibilities for TT. Have been waiting an awfully long time very patiently since I submitted this as a possible match.

Re: Edward and Walter Bennett

Article Text:
Normally, it would be absurd to think that three cold-blooded murders could be considered so redundant, they actually gummed up the wheels of justice.

But when it comes to a geriatric maniac, who once thought of himself as "The Rifleman," very little is normal.
When you are charged with killing as many men - and women - as Steve Flemmi, not only is it possible for some murders to get lost in the shuffle of indictments and appeals . . . apparently it's necessary.
In the space of just nine months, all three Bennett brothers - Edward, known as "Wimpy," Walter and Billy - were systematically executed some 34 years ago. In the name of legal expediency, and to shove Flemmi's byzantine case further along the rails of justice, the Bennett murders now become a kind of giant asterisk . . . for which no one will answer. Not soon, anyway.
The Bennett brothers controlled a substantial gaming and loan-sharking enterprise throughout Dorchester and Roxbury.
Stevie Flemmi apprenticed under Wimpy and Walter Bennett, until he allegedly decided it was in his best interest to kill them. Their two bodies have yet to be found, though word has it they were hauled off to Vermont and buried vertically in a deep, narrow hole, to disguise any suggestion of a mongrel grave.
Billy Bennett was not a leg breaker. But he did tend bar in Walter's Lounge, the family joint on Dudley Street. And he was the last Bennett brother shot to death. The only reason he doesn't rest somewhere in Vermont is that he ran from a car and collapsed in a snowbank.
Two weeks before Billy was killed, his son recalls Special Agent H. Paul Rico asking his father to surrender the family books.
Steve Flemmi, and the lifelong friend he would betray at least twice, Francis P. "Cadillac Frank" Salemme, were charged with the Bennett murders in the first of many indictments. But that was seven years and a lifetime ago.
Before Stevie could screw him one more time, Frank settled his affairs with the feds. A few days before Christmas he walked into a grand jury room and confirmed that the man who gave James "Whitey" Bulger his head start into the fugitive life was John Connolly, a former FBI agent, a surrogate brother to Billy Bulger and a hack who liked to get his nails manicured, just like his favorite wiseguys.
As far as Salemme was concerned, the Bennett murders vanished.
Eventually, U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf would toss them out of Stevie's first indictment on a technicality. Ironically, just as the skeletons of other Bulger and Flemmi victims were being pulled from sandpits and marshes in Dorchester and Quincy.
Meanwhile, Flemmi and Bulger get themselves indicted for killing people in Oklahoma and Florida, two state jurisdictions all too willing to kill them.
Across the bitter span of 34 years, Billy Bennett Jr. and his brother, Walter, came to believe that their uncles' and father's lives did not count in the eyes of the government. Their anger had eaten away at their lives. Still, they were heartened last winter when prosecutors returned to the federal Appeals Court and won their fight to have the Bennett murders reinstated against Flemmi.
Yesterday, they were both silent and somewhat philosophical after a lengthy meeting with the feds in the U.S. Attorney's Office.
"I don't want to take the grease off the wheel," Billy Bennett said, "just let them turn. If the final outcome is what they're hoping for, it'll be all right. They're doing the best they can."
Billy Bennett knows his father's murder will remain in judicial limbo. But he also knows the best Stevie Flemmi can hope for is to die very old and crazy in prison, rather than in the electric chair, or strapped to a gurney.
Three murders are set aside so that Flemmi can begin the process of trading for his life. Billy Bennett Jr. said nothing about what the federal government told him, yesterday.
But it's likely they apologized to the Bennetts, not only for what a gangster did to their family, but what a few malignant G-Men did as well. And in the end, that's where Stevie Flemmi may truly answer for his crimes . . . by giving up old, dear friends like John Connolly, H. Paul Rico and Dennis Condon.

Caption:
WHEELS OF JUSTICE: William Bennett Jr., whose father and uncles were allegedly gunned down by mobsters some 34 years ago, is trusting that federal prosecutors will make sure Stephen 'The Rifleman' Flemmi pays for his crimes. HERALD FILE PHOTO